John Gilmore and Maddog Hall discuss .ORG bids

TreyHarris writes "Over on SAGEwire, we have posted an email exchange between John Gilmore (EFF cofounder) and Jon "maddog" Hall (Executive Director, Linux International) about the .ORG bids. It's a fascinating read, and goes much further into depth about the issues than I've seen on any news site thus far."

Comments

coveted TLDs

[YoJaUta]

Just let me know when Eritrea (.er) wants to start selling domains.

Just imagine...

moth.er fath.er lov.er teach.er

And a whole slew of naughty ones.

25 Cents sounds nice ..

[SuperDuG]

Well I'm spending $6 a year for domains now, but $0.25 certainly does sound nice.

HOWEVER, I do like the nothing I spend for dugnet.oss (ref OpenNIC)

Keep it high!

[dasmegabyte]

Come on, folks, who's kidding who? If the price of .org goes down, it won't mean more nonprofits could afford domains...it'd mean more bandwagon domain prospectors and more work for ICANN, who obviously CANN'T handle the load they have now.

I have about six .org domain names. I bought them at $15 each per year. If .org dropped to $6, I would have about a hundred -- every possible abbreviation and misspelling I could think of. And I'm just one guy, running what used to be a web hosting co-op.

If anything, we need to jack up the price on .org. Organizations are not starving so much that they can't afford $15...hell, a single mailing costs more than ten times that, and it's about the price of two hours of one guy telemarketing. What .org needs is something to cause it to rise above commercial domains. If the price was more like $100 per domain, it would give more credibility to the domain holder as there would be less impetus to snipe these expensive domains.

Oh, and while we're at it, the profits from the additional price shouldn't go to a company. They should go to a serious of non profits, selected by the members when they register. EFF and FSF could be on the top of the list ;).

Re:Keep it high!

[garcia]

I really think you are completely wrong here.

#1, you shouldn't be allowed to register "all the mis-spellings you can think of". You should have to be a valid non-profit organization.

#2, it is obvious to me that the purpose of your buying these domains is to be annoying. There is absolutely no valid reason to have a "misspelling" registered other than to be a pain in the ass.

I registered lazylightning.org with my friend. It's a Grateful Dead reference. We are actually non-profit. It's not a misspelling and it isn't for any reason other than for me to have a webpage and valid name to ssh to.

If I have to start paying $100 just to stop idiots like you from registering shit that would make me even MORE annoyed than I already am about the prices.

It's people like you that ruin it for the rest of us.

Re:Keep it high!

[Ian Bicking]

Defining "non-profit" seems very difficult to me. 503c? That's pretty difficult to get -- it takes quite a while (generally at least a year, I believe), and there's quite a few formal requirements. Because of that, a lot of new non-profit-like organizations attach themselves to a 503c, who collects money for them and performs other (mostly financial) services. But then one 503c will have to own many domains.

Anyway, 503c is silly to require -- it's US-only, and doesn't cover a significant portion of actual "organizations". Lazylightning.org is not a "valid non-profit organization", it's personal, and those aren't the same things (it also doesn't have any valid connection to the Grateful Dead -- it would be more appropriate for you to use your own name).

If not formally non-profit, what then? Perhaps you could ban for-profit corporations from .org. Corporations obviously could get a 503c designation if they were validly non-profit (or the not-for-profit designation which is slightly different). This might work okay, and a "corporation" is a well-defined international concept.

But it's still difficult to determine what the limit for domain names registered would be. There are innumerable valid reasons for one organization/person to own multiple domains. Where would you draw the line?

Mostly, if we could get rid of blatantly invalid domain registrations (e.g., mispellings that point to those stupid search engines) and domains that are registered but not used (or have "under construction" for two years), then it would probably be a lot better. Of course, keeping aggressive trademark owners from manipulating the system is also important.

This is difficult as long as individuals have access to the system, as the system would continue to be manipulated by multi-level marketing companies, who work "through" individuals for their nefarious (or rather annoying) schemes.

And there's nothing wrong with registering a misspelling, so long as it's a misspelling of a domain you own (which I think is what the original poster is refering to). At a certain point it gets silly, but sometimes it is important (for instance, if you used lazy-lightning.org, you'd probably also want lazylightning.org, as it's hard to remember the difference between the two).

I love OpenNIC!

[aussersterne]

OpenNIC is the greatest! All those additional domains, the public-spiritedness of it all, plus the OpenNIC DNS servers, even the bottom rung ones, are so much faster than the ones provided by my ISP!

Win-win-win-win.

domain names are stupid

[tps12]

The problem with the whole domain name system is that it has been abused to no end. URLs aren't supposed to make sense; the address box in your web browser is not supposed to be a substitute for a search engine. A good analogy could be made to email addresses. No one expects to be able to email my_neighbor_john@wholived.nextdoor.tome.whenIwas6. com and have it work. Instead, we all have address books so we don't have to remember everyone's email address. Likewise, in the web world, we have bookmarks or Favorites.

So what should domains be? Well, just what they sound like, "domains" of servers. Go.com does this right. They have a web server for espn.go.com and another for abcnews.go.com. Don't want to remember those? Fine, then bookmark espn.go.com and call it "sportz."

Registering names for domains that will only ever have websites is also extremely stupid. What is at ftp.hotornot.com? Are there any groups at news.onion.com?

In conclusion, I will concede that the .org domain name is priced as under a monopoly (since it is controlled by one). But you do not need a domain name to have a website. Get a subdomain wherever your site is hosted, and you'll be fine.

Many TLDs isn't the answer

[Ian Bicking]

Quoting John Gilmore:

If we made a hundred GTLDs instead of three or ten, then the price of monopolizing a name for speculation would be 10x to 30x the current price. At the same time, the value of any one of those names would drop significantly, since most of them are replaceable by each other. If the speculators had only bought 90 of the 100 names, a company that wanted to be "CompanyX.something" could become "CompanyX.okay" or "CompanyX.oui" -- without paying a dime to the speculators. They'd lose their entire investment in buying up "CompanyX" names.

That doesn't make sense to me -- sure, you could use CompanyX.okay instead of CompanyX.something, but that's just a way of saying "let's make domains useless and random, then we can't speculate."

.com has been overloaded, obviously. But without clearly-defined alternate TLDs, I don't see how adding more will help. Maybe (though unlikely) after a couple years .com will lose it's canonical identity. But people still won't be able to remember the name of a site. This isn't a question of search engines, but of having a meaningful domain system. If you want meaningless, use IP addresses, or get one domain and create serial numbers below it for every individual site/computer (if you want to be IP-address independent).

Real people, however, want meaningful domain names. If you have a hundred TLDs, many of them will overlap conceptually. Who can remember the difference between .biz and .bus, or .game and .toy? They might remember your carefully chosen second-level domain, but with generic TLDs they won't be able to get to it. Unless you register the name in all related TLDs. But isn't that what we were trying to get away from?

We have been attacked by multi-level marketers and spammers, and those people are damaging the system greatly. But we can't win by trying to beat them at their game -- by diluting the system so greatly that they can't play. That just ruins the game for everyone, and the MLMers and spammers will still be there anyway. I don't like ICANN, but I do think that well-defined, meaningful, sometimes regulated, and non-overlapping TLDs are essential. This makes ICANN all the worse, because something like it is essential, but done the wrong way (with the wrong people influencing it) it will again damage the system.

Jon and John don't know about domain registrars

[philovivero]

Interesting. From the email exchange:

John Gilmore said:
> That's just because you were silly enough to buy your domains from Verisign. They rely on millions of people like you, who were too lazy to switch; that's why their price is so high.

I did switch. I get my domains now through Joker.com, at about $11. each. I still consider this too expensive.

>I get domains for $8 to $12/year via eNom.com.

I went to their web site and they state that they want $29.95 for a domain. It was unclear if this was for a one year or two year registration, but even if it was two years, that means $15./year. But you probably have connections that I don't.

Eh? Don't these guys know about Gandi dot Net?

About US$10/year (EUR12/year) to have any of .COM, .NET, or .ORG domains. I have had all my domains registered through them for about three years.

They even do DNS for you, if you don't have it. And their entire system is automated. I've never had to make a phone call, send a letter, or a FAX. Everything, and I mean everything is done through their web interface.

And just in case you wonder, I'm a U.S. citizen... the fact these guys are based out of France and charge me in Euros doesn't seem to make any difference. I've never had a problem with these guys. They're clued.

Domain names aren't stupid

[yelvington]

Some kid who wasn't around when domain names were invented posts nonsense like "URLs aren't supposed to make sense." Then some undercaffeinated moderator votes it up. Now, who's being stupid?

Network hosts have conventionally borne the names of their organizations since the 1970s -- in fact, before the creation of TCP/IP. The reason the domain name system was created was to facilitate use of easily memorized, meaningful names rather than numeric addresses.

Read RFCs 597, 606, 608, 810, 952, and 1034 for a start.

If you really believe "you do not need a domain name to have a website," then by all means feel free to use numeric addresses. You won't need to pay a registrar one red cent, and no corporations will sue you for infringing their trademarks.

Considered... and rejected!

[tlambert]

I've had my ".org" domain name for a decade now. That's well before Dupont and all of the other idiots jumped in and tried to turn the DNS into a second branch of the PTO, and registered 500 domains in a day, and we all had to start paying for something which used to be free.

When I got this domain, the rules on .com, .net, .edu, and .mil were such that .org was the only place where a private individual was *allowed* to get a domain name at all!

I, for one, would be extremely pissed if the rules on .org were changed at this late date, so that I could no longer keep my domain name. I'm pretty sure that "slashdot.org" would be pretty pissed, as well.

If you are going to do that to .org, then limit two character domain names based on country codes to *citizens* of those countries, and limit .net to network infractructure (ISPs, NSPs, etc.), and .com to incorporated entities. Nobody else gets domain names, thanks!

Ut-oh... I guess it's now obvious that limiting domains by lexicography is a stupid thing. If you want to be a lexicographer, and you think you know better than the rest of us, by all means, start a search engine company or a portal site, and let people who agree with you use it and validate your judgement... or ignore you, if that's what their tastes dictate.

-- Terry

Re:This just bothered me...

[Wakkow]

Of course, the other solution is, do a Google search and avoid the whole issue.

Don't you mean "google dot com"?